Introduction

Istanbul will always be one of my favourite cities. Even if you’re not interested in history at all, I think you can still sense in Istanbul that it was once the seat of a vast empire. In any case, today I’m continuing my travels with a flight to Paris, before I then return to the orient.

Check-In

My alarm goes off at 05h35. My flight departs at 08h00.

I’m staying at the Yotel Landside Hotel at Istanbul airport. If you’re arriving by car, the drop off for Turkish Airlines international Business Class check-in is in front of door 5. There is a valet service that can assist if you’re carting around with you copious amounts of luggage. To enter the terminal, you need to go through security. The photos of the outside I took the evening before, when I returned from my day in the city.

Turkish Airlines checks in for international Business Class on row L. There are sofas opposite the counters, although I’m not sure what they’re supposed to be good for. Nobody enjoys spending time at check-in. I suspect these are an artifact from when Turkish, very briefly, offered First Class.

The queue is very long when I join just after 06h00 in the morning. It doesn’t help that most passengers’ initial instinct is to try and find a way to jump the queue or come up with an excuse why they really, really cannot be expected to queue like everybody else. With one particularly obnoxious passenger, I suspect that perhaps the hair transplant he obviously flew to Turkey for may have affected his brain – as it were. Eventually, it takes 25 minutes for me to check in. I’d rather they had somebody managing the queue than plush sofas, to be honest.

From check-in I head for fast track immigration and security. Ahead of me in the queue is a Russian woman. When it comes for her to place her Louis Vuitton suitcase on the belt, she bats her obscenely long fake eye lashes and attempts a coy smile, which can’t be easy with how much junk she’s evidently had injected into her lips. She motions to explain that she has back problems, so the security officer should put the case on the belt for her. But that only earns her a death glare. “You put, or f**k off”, he tells her. I appreciate the sentiment. Interesting word choice, perhaps…

Turkish Airlines Istanbul Airport Lounge

The lounge situation in Istanbul is problematic. It highlights the disadvantage of having such an enormous terminal. Access to the lounge is near gate E1. However, my flight will be boarding from gate B17, in the completely opposite direction – about twenty minutes away.

The lounge is horrible. It enormous and feels about as comfortable and inviting as the great hall at London’s Paddington station. It’s also very full and there’s obviously not enough staff on hand to feed everyone and clear away the dirty dishes. I just want a coffee to wake up. But I seriously can’t be arsed to join the queue for the barista station, which is already twelve persons deep. So I leave again.

Boarding

I exit the lounge and decide to slowly mosey over to gate B17. I make slow progress because there are just so many people in my way. Just as boarding is about to begin, a French woman approaches the desk and informs the gate agent that friends of hers are stuck at transfer security and will take a while to get through. If the gate agent could just ask the pilot to wait maybe half an hour? To her credit, the gate agent manages to school her face in a neutral position and explains that they cannot hold up the flight. If the passengers miss the flight, they will be rebooked. I don’t know if they made it. I’m guessing not, though, because after boarding is completed I hear the forward cargo hold being reopened and then closed again later – I’m guessing to offload some suitcases.

The Cabin & Seat

The seat on this aircraft is the same as the one on the B 787-9 I had on the flight from Antalya to Istanbul. I’m on 2A, which is a window seat. The seat is spacious and comfortable enough. My only complaint is the partially covered window.

A rather irritating feature of the inflight entertainment system is that the screen goes on every time the crew make an announcement. And on Turkish they tend to make quite a few. So I keep having to switch it off. It’s no biggie, seeing as this is a day flight anyway. But I think it would really irritate me if it kept happening during the night when I’m trying to sleep.

The Service & Crew

The crew on this flight are meh, for a loss of anything nicer to say. When the captain makes his announcement and tells us he will leave us in the “competent hands of your distinguished cabin crew”, I nearly bark a laugh out loud. The maître de is a grumpy guy in his fifties. At some point during the flight, I ask him if they have pillows. To which he answers, “yes, we do”, but without bringing me one or telling me where to find them.

The service on the ground consists of a glass of orange juice, which is served by the only friendly cabin crew on the whole damn aircraft. But sadly, he’s not serving the Business Class cabin during the flight. Just before we push back, the crew ask passengers what they’ll be drinking with breakfast. I ask for a coffee with milk.

After take-off, the service begins with the distribution of hot scented towels which are exceptionally fluffy.

The Meal – Breakfast

The meal service starts very quickly. The trays are delivered straight from the galley, not from a trolley. On the tray is a plate with cheese, turkey and vegetables. With that, there’s a small ramekin with some red pepper paste, which is quite flavourful. There’s also fruit salad and yoghurt, and another ramekin with butter and honey. Once I’m done, the plate with the cheese is removed and replaced with the hot meal. There should be three hot dishes to choose from, but I’m just given the omelette without being asked what I’d like. I have to ask for the coffee with milk three more times before it is brought to me, long after the tray has been removed and the service is over.

Arrival in Paris

We start our descent into Paris just after passing Dijon. Paris is reporting poor visibility with low cloud and a temperature just below zero degrees Celsius.

Turkish operates out of Terminal 1 in CDG, which is the flying saucer and just such a cool building. My suitcase is quick to arrive, and then I’m already on my way to the Pullman at Roissypole to quickly dump my suitcase before heading into town.

Getting into Paris

I alight at Roissypole, and that’s when I see the signs that there are no trains running to the airport due to scheduled maintenance. So instead, I take the Roissybus from Roissypole to the Opéra Garnier. I’m lucky to get a seat, because by the time we reach Terminal 1, the bus is so full that the driver has to turn passengers away, some of which have been waiting for an hour already.

Eventually, it takes us ninety minutes to get to Paris, but it’s totally worth it because I have a reservation to go see the recently reopened Notre Dame cathedral. The place is crawling with tourists, so that you only make slow progress inside. But it certainly is a very grand place.

Conclusion

This completes my fourth flight with Turkish Airlines and I’m only moderately impressed, to be honest. On the plus side, the food is good and having a dedicated Business Class cabin on short-haul is rather nice and exceptionally comfortable. On the downside, though, their cabin crew are a bit of a mixed bag, but mostly unfriendly and uninterested in their passengers, to the point of being downright rude. Their level of functional English is generally rather limited. It is also concerning that the same can be said of the cockpit crews.

Turkish Airlines’ hub in Istanbul is simply too big to be comfortable or pleasant to transfer through. The distance to the city and the lack of any useful public transport also make you think twice about passing through Istanbul airport.